White House Aides “Infuriated” as Trump Bulldozes His Own Infrastructure Plan

January 8, 2018

By Bess Levin for Vanity Fair

As a candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly railed against America’s “crumbling roads and bridges,” “dilapidated airports,” and “factories moving overseas to Mexico,” adding that such problems “[could] all be fixed . . . only by me.” Yet after he was inexplicably elected, instead of designing a plan that could actually win Democratic support, not to mention the support of many Americans, the self-described “genius” decided to direct his energies first toward attempting to kill Obamacare and second toward passing a wildly unpopular tax bill. Now, with those two issues out of his system, the former real-estate developer who reportedly flies into a rage at the sight of a pothole will turn to infrastructure. So far, though, the administration’s attempts to formulate a coherent policy are going about as well as its so-called “infrastructure week.”

Trump has frequently described himself as a builder, regaling audiences with stories from his real-estate days, and donning hard hats with aplomb. Last summer he looked in his element unfurling a long paper flowchart showing all the permissions purportedly required to build a highway. He also, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to understand much about his own infrastructure plan.

The Washington Post reports that at Camp David on Friday, the president “expressed misgivings about his administration’s infrastructure plan . . . telling Republican leaders that building projects through public-private partnerships is unlikely to work—and that it may be better for the government to pursue a different path.” Unfortunately, it seems no one informed Trump’s spokespeople of his change of heart: